11 ms·

The Marriages of Power Couples Reinforce Income Inequality

35 points by Futurebot 11y ago

cheez 11y ago
More on this phenomenon in "Coming Apart: The State of White America". My 2c: A guy or gal making $350K is not commended for reducing income inequality by marrying someone making $60K. Indeed, if things fall apart, the "equity courts" will divide the earnings spouse nicely between them. While I can understand you don't want someone on the street, these things just penalize people for being successful. So it is not a surprise that people are practicing self-preservation and selecting those spouses who have nothing to gain from a separation (besides their freedom.) Additionally, as alluded to in the book above, people who have university degrees have only a 20% chance of divorce and usually, higher income earners have said university degrees.
- alistairSH 11y ago
  Wow, that's seriously jaded stuff... Selecting mates based on lowering the cost of eventual divorce! I'd bet it has more to do with maintaining current (or expected) lifestyle. If you're used to a top-5% income, with the lifestyle that income enables, marrying "down" has a real impact. The effect would be even more noticeable in an expensive metropolitan area like NorCal, NYC, etc.
  - cheez 11y ago
    Read the book. Marrying down financially has no impact (financially) on lifestyle but when there is that much of an implied difference intellectually, it's going to cause problems. It's not jaded to be pragmatic. Marriage is a contract. Recently, you can even hear young people, men mostly, talk about ways to avoid being considered common law which I found hilarious and would never have been a topic of discussion when I was their age.
  - GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
    It's not too dissimilar from standard MRA talking points.
  - landryraccoon 11y ago
    It's very common to have divorced parents. If you saw your parents go through a divorce the fear is far from academic.
  - superuser2 11y ago
    An event with >10% probability that will cut your quality of life by at least half forever, and guarantee that extended unemployment carries a prison sentence, is a pretty big deal. We generally carry home/car/life/health insurance to manage risks that are drastically lower probability and consequence, yet no one calls that jaded.
nateabele 11y ago
Oh look! Journalists have opinions on other people's lives.
- jclulow 11y ago
  Are they not allowed to? The Upshot seems more like a column than regular news journalism, and they do cite studies and information from other people.
paulddraper 11y ago
This article is missing important info: (1) This is much less interesting if the effect doesn't propogate, i.e. if income levels only lasts one generation. This is a crucial part of eugenics -- which the articles compares the effect to -- and yet nothing in the article suggests that income transfers generations. (I'm not saying it does or doesn't; just that the article doesn't address this at all.) (2) The same is probably true for good looks, culture, athletic ability, hobbies, education, geography, race, IQ, and wealth. I suspect there are a number of confounding variables. Omitting any mention of them doesn't invalidate the reported results, but does make misinterpreting the results of the article much easier.
- devdas 11y ago
  The benefits of high income levels tend to compound across generations.
  - paulddraper 11y ago
    Can you cite a source? I'm not saying you or the article are wrong, just that there are some big gaps.
    - Futurebot 11y ago
      Try http://www.economist.com/node/21640316 http://www.economist.com/node/21640316
      - paulddraper 11y ago
        Unless I am reading the article wrong, that says that children of high income earners do better on the SAT, and that high income parents spend a lot on education. I don't see anything about the correlation between parent income and child income.
        Futurebot 11y ago
        High earning parents are able to pay for prep schools, tutoring, materials. Those children get into elite schools. Those graduates of elites schools go on to elite, well-paid jobs. "On graduation, many members of America’s future elite will head for the law firms, banks and consultancies where starting salaries are highest." Here are some more explicit articles on the phenomenon: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/07/rich-people-raise-kids-family-wealth/399809/ http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/07/rich-peo... http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/11763836/Wealthy-parents-create-glass-floor-to-ensure-children-succeed-regardless-of-talent.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/11763836/Wealthy-pare... http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/18/upshot/rich-children-and-poor-ones-are-raised-very-differently.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/18/upshot/rich-children-and-p... If you'd like to read a study on it ("Poor Little Rich Kids? The Determinants of the Intergenerational Transmission of Wealth"), you can do so here: http://ftp.iza.org/dp9227.pdf http://ftp.iza.org/dp9227.pdf Here's another from Pew: http://www.pewtrusts.org/~/media/assets/2015/07/fsm-irs-report_artfinal.pdf?la=en http://www.pewtrusts.org/~/media/assets/2015/07/fsm-irs-repo... If you want more information, google "social mobility united states", "intergenerational mobility united states", and read "Twilight of the Elites" and "The Son also Rises."
omonra 11y ago
My two thoughts on this: 1. I bet a large portion of this phenomenon is related to the current US divorce laws (basically a woman with a child can divorce a high-income husband and claim a large portion of his income for child support / maintenance). Therefore marrying people of your 'social circle' is a certain way to mitigate this effect (ie if your spouse is a high-level attorney rather than a secretary, you have a much lower risk of it happening to you). 2. Author kinda assumes the reader is an idiot in some places. For example: "As it becomes harder for many people to “marry up”. Well, no. "People" never really married up. Women with looks had a chance to marry men of higher social standing. The reverse (man marrying a woman of higher social standing) was very much an exception. So basically what this means is that men of today are not as interested in marrying women beneath their social status as they were in the past. I guess that women's liberation had a lot to do with this phenomenon. If one is an intelligent woman, she can simply go to a good school and get a career - instead of her only choice in life being marriage to a rich man. So that actually sounds like a not terrible thing for such women.
- meric 11y ago
  The reverse (man marrying a woman of higher social standing) was very much an exception. I'd argue against that. There's precedence in older wealthy women marrying younger man of lower social standing. Queen Victoria of the British Empire marrying Prince Albert is one example of a woman marrying a man of lower social standing (though they are of the same age). in Albert's own words, "I am very happy and contented; but the difficulty in filling my place with the proper dignity is that I am only the husband, not the master in the house." It may be uncomfortable for the man in question, but it has happened.
  - webnrrd2k 11y ago
    I don't think that any one is saying it never happened, just that it's more of an exception,or a much rarer occurrence.
  - GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
    That's why it's an "exception" instead of an "impossibility."
dogma1138 11y ago
Some of the comments in this thread make me think if people actually date anymore. People interact with other people that are close to them at any given time, childhood, college, career. Marrying your sweetheart became rarer since people stopped marrying at the age of 18 in general. Marrying your college GF became more rare because people are now marrying in their late 20's to mid 30's rather than early 20's. When people move on with their life they usually replace their previous social circles with new ones. So if you are a banker your social circle will be made mostly from your new coworkers and maybe maybe 1 or 2 childhood/college friends if they happen to still live near by. So you are much more likely to marry another banker, lawyer, trader and the likes simply because those are the people you interact with on your day to day, and those are the people you'll be more likely to see after work at less than official capacity. It's not like people actively look for spouses who make as much as they do, is that they more likely to meet a spouse from the same social economic circle. Life isn't some feel good romcom, yes sometimes some one might fall in love with a maid, a waiter, or meet their soul mate in the park when their dogs decides to run through the sprinklers who just happens to be a teacher but the likelihood of that happening by chance is about the same as a romcom winning the Oscars. I won't claim that some people don't do some due diligence and plan engagements with every potential mate to the point where they cover financial compatibility but I would dare to say this is rare. Other arrangements such as prenups are also much more likely to happen in such cases where there is financial inequality to begin with or when one of the partners has hereditary assets which they would like to protect. P.S. It's a bit odd that not subsidizing some one these days will count as income inequality, also it's important to point out that financial inequality between partners leads to infidelity and divorce. Partners who make less money than their other partner are much more likely to cheat, especially if they become a full time or part time stay at home parent. Marriages in which one of the partners makes significantly more than the other also are 3 times more likely to end up in divorce.
- dikdik 11y ago
  Exactly my thoughts. Assortative mating has been happening all along, equality between the sexes is the only thing that has changed here. Back then even if you didn't get married young, most men did not have options to marry a female doctor, banker, lawyer, etc. You would meet a nice secretary at work and probably use similar criteria to today (pretty, compatible personality wise, smart). In 2015 that smart secretary is a smart doctor, none of this is surprising.
jackcosgrove 11y ago
If you marry someone who is dissimilar to you in curiosity, interests, aspirations, and experiences (i.e. not someone in a similar place in society to you), then what the heck are you supposed to talk about for forty to sixty years?
- fulafel 11y ago
  That sounds like enough time to get bored of talking shop with the same person outside of work.
crdoconnor 11y ago
This is another in a long series of misdirections about income inequality by Tyler Cowen. More details: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/11/desperate-effort-by-tyler-cowen-and-megan-mcardle-to-silence-discussion-about-income-inequality.html http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/11/desperate-effort-by-t... >Of all the causes behind growing income inequality, in the longer run this development may prove one of the most significant and also one of the hardest to counter. Well, that's pretty much why you chose to invent this little story, isn't it Tyler? In unrelated news, robots are totally going to steal your job, which may prove one of the most significant and also one of the hardest causes of income inequality to counter: https://www.aei.org/publication/will-robots-terminate-the-us-middle-class-a-qa-with-tyler-cowen-author-of-average-is-over/ https://www.aei.org/publication/will-robots-terminate-the-us...
- Futurebot 11y ago
  You might be right about an attempt at misdirection (I wouldn't speculate one way or another, but obviously EPI agrees with you), but I don't think that invalidates the case about income inequality being partially (among many other sources) caused by AM. It seems fairly well-supported by the evidence from NBER, which Cowen wasn't involved in: http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21595972-how-sexual-equality-increases-gap-between-rich-and-poor-households-sex-brains-and http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21595972-how-sex... The (also liberal) Brookings institution also seems to support it, so I don't think the opposition case is exactly ironclad: http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/social-mobility-memos/posts/2014/02/10-opposites-dont-attract-assortative-mating-reeves http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/social-mobility-memos/posts/2... Another thing to consider is that income inequality is increasing via second-order AM effects, via propagation across generations, rather than directly due to the marriages (http://www.economist.com/node/21640316 http://www.economist.com/node/21640316)
rayiner 11y ago
> These days, an investment banker may marry another investment banker rather than a high school sweetheart, or a lawyer will marry another lawyer, or a prestigious client, rather than a secretary. I'm all for reducing income inequality, but I find the complaints about assortive marriage to be, frankly, sexist. Sandra Day O'Connor graduated third in her class at Stanford Law, and was only offered jobs as a legal secretary in private law firms. Back then, a lot of smart, ambitious women were relegated to jobs that didn't maximize their intellectual potential because of sexism in the workplace. Now that sexism is subsiding, and women are free to pursue traditionally male jobs, of course you're seeing more couples marrying within their educational and economic class.
- rdlecler1 11y ago
  True, one might also argue that our education system greatly suffered as it lost many of the best and brightest teachers (This comment is intended as an observation, not a value judgement).
- omonra 11y ago
  The complaints are not sexist. People rather tend to focus on one thing at a time. 50 years ago sexism was a real issue - today it's not. Meanwhile growing income inequality (or rather too many poor people - which is the non-pc way to describe it) is becoming a big issue of today.
rdlecler1 11y ago
In Evolutionary theory, Population Generics typically assumes random mating. But because of both assortative mating AND a secular trend toward geographical re-distribution across political, social, and economic factors (bankers in NY, techies in SF, etc) you have the potential makings of speciation: Homo Fund Manager, Homo Engineer? And which proto-species who would the first Mars colonists likely come from? Will a long family of engineers shun a potential husband because he stems from a long family of bankers?

35 points by Futurebot 11y ago

cheez 11y ago

More on this phenomenon in "Coming Apart: The State of White America". My 2c: A guy or gal making $350K is not commended for reducing income inequality by marrying someone making $60K. Indeed, if things fall apart, the "equity courts" will divide the earnings spouse nicely between them. While I can understand you don't want someone on the street, these things just penalize people for being successful. So it is not a surprise that people are practicing self-preservation and selecting those spouses who have nothing to gain from a separation (besides their freedom.) Additionally, as alluded to in the book above, people who have university degrees have only a 20% chance of divorce and usually, higher income earners have said university degrees.

alistairSH 11y ago
Wow, that's seriously jaded stuff... Selecting mates based on lowering the cost of eventual divorce! I'd bet it has more to do with maintaining current (or expected) lifestyle. If you're used to a top-5% income, with the lifestyle that income enables, marrying "down" has a real impact. The effect would be even more noticeable in an expensive metropolitan area like NorCal, NYC, etc.
- cheez 11y ago
  Read the book. Marrying down financially has no impact (financially) on lifestyle but when there is that much of an implied difference intellectually, it's going to cause problems. It's not jaded to be pragmatic. Marriage is a contract. Recently, you can even hear young people, men mostly, talk about ways to avoid being considered common law which I found hilarious and would never have been a topic of discussion when I was their age.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
  It's not too dissimilar from standard MRA talking points.
- landryraccoon 11y ago
  It's very common to have divorced parents. If you saw your parents go through a divorce the fear is far from academic.
- superuser2 11y ago
  An event with >10% probability that will cut your quality of life by at least half forever, and guarantee that extended unemployment carries a prison sentence, is a pretty big deal. We generally carry home/car/life/health insurance to manage risks that are drastically lower probability and consequence, yet no one calls that jaded.

nateabele 11y ago

Oh look! Journalists have opinions on other people's lives.

jclulow 11y ago
Are they not allowed to? The Upshot seems more like a column than regular news journalism, and they do cite studies and information from other people.

paulddraper 11y ago

This article is missing important info: (1) This is much less interesting if the effect doesn't propogate, i.e. if income levels only lasts one generation. This is a crucial part of eugenics -- which the articles compares the effect to -- and yet nothing in the article suggests that income transfers generations. (I'm not saying it does or doesn't; just that the article doesn't address this at all.) (2) The same is probably true for good looks, culture, athletic ability, hobbies, education, geography, race, IQ, and wealth. I suspect there are a number of confounding variables. Omitting any mention of them doesn't invalidate the reported results, but does make misinterpreting the results of the article much easier.

devdas 11y ago
The benefits of high income levels tend to compound across generations.
- paulddraper 11y ago
  Can you cite a source? I'm not saying you or the article are wrong, just that there are some big gaps.
  - Futurebot 11y ago
    Try http://www.economist.com/node/21640316 http://www.economist.com/node/21640316
    - paulddraper 11y ago
      Unless I am reading the article wrong, that says that children of high income earners do better on the SAT, and that high income parents spend a lot on education. I don't see anything about the correlation between parent income and child income.
      - Futurebot 11y ago
        High earning parents are able to pay for prep schools, tutoring, materials. Those children get into elite schools. Those graduates of elites schools go on to elite, well-paid jobs. "On graduation, many members of America’s future elite will head for the law firms, banks and consultancies where starting salaries are highest." Here are some more explicit articles on the phenomenon: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/07/rich-people-raise-kids-family-wealth/399809/ http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/07/rich-peo... http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/11763836/Wealthy-parents-create-glass-floor-to-ensure-children-succeed-regardless-of-talent.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/11763836/Wealthy-pare... http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/18/upshot/rich-children-and-poor-ones-are-raised-very-differently.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/18/upshot/rich-children-and-p... If you'd like to read a study on it ("Poor Little Rich Kids? The Determinants of the Intergenerational Transmission of Wealth"), you can do so here: http://ftp.iza.org/dp9227.pdf http://ftp.iza.org/dp9227.pdf Here's another from Pew: http://www.pewtrusts.org/~/media/assets/2015/07/fsm-irs-report_artfinal.pdf?la=en http://www.pewtrusts.org/~/media/assets/2015/07/fsm-irs-repo... If you want more information, google "social mobility united states", "intergenerational mobility united states", and read "Twilight of the Elites" and "The Son also Rises."

omonra 11y ago

My two thoughts on this: 1. I bet a large portion of this phenomenon is related to the current US divorce laws (basically a woman with a child can divorce a high-income husband and claim a large portion of his income for child support / maintenance). Therefore marrying people of your 'social circle' is a certain way to mitigate this effect (ie if your spouse is a high-level attorney rather than a secretary, you have a much lower risk of it happening to you). 2. Author kinda assumes the reader is an idiot in some places. For example: "As it becomes harder for many people to “marry up”. Well, no. "People" never really married up. Women with looks had a chance to marry men of higher social standing. The reverse (man marrying a woman of higher social standing) was very much an exception. So basically what this means is that men of today are not as interested in marrying women beneath their social status as they were in the past. I guess that women's liberation had a lot to do with this phenomenon. If one is an intelligent woman, she can simply go to a good school and get a career - instead of her only choice in life being marriage to a rich man. So that actually sounds like a not terrible thing for such women.

meric 11y ago
The reverse (man marrying a woman of higher social standing) was very much an exception. I'd argue against that. There's precedence in older wealthy women marrying younger man of lower social standing. Queen Victoria of the British Empire marrying Prince Albert is one example of a woman marrying a man of lower social standing (though they are of the same age). in Albert's own words, "I am very happy and contented; but the difficulty in filling my place with the proper dignity is that I am only the husband, not the master in the house." It may be uncomfortable for the man in question, but it has happened.
- webnrrd2k 11y ago
  I don't think that any one is saying it never happened, just that it's more of an exception,or a much rarer occurrence.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
  That's why it's an "exception" instead of an "impossibility."

dogma1138 11y ago

Some of the comments in this thread make me think if people actually date anymore. People interact with other people that are close to them at any given time, childhood, college, career. Marrying your sweetheart became rarer since people stopped marrying at the age of 18 in general. Marrying your college GF became more rare because people are now marrying in their late 20's to mid 30's rather than early 20's. When people move on with their life they usually replace their previous social circles with new ones. So if you are a banker your social circle will be made mostly from your new coworkers and maybe maybe 1 or 2 childhood/college friends if they happen to still live near by. So you are much more likely to marry another banker, lawyer, trader and the likes simply because those are the people you interact with on your day to day, and those are the people you'll be more likely to see after work at less than official capacity. It's not like people actively look for spouses who make as much as they do, is that they more likely to meet a spouse from the same social economic circle. Life isn't some feel good romcom, yes sometimes some one might fall in love with a maid, a waiter, or meet their soul mate in the park when their dogs decides to run through the sprinklers who just happens to be a teacher but the likelihood of that happening by chance is about the same as a romcom winning the Oscars. I won't claim that some people don't do some due diligence and plan engagements with every potential mate to the point where they cover financial compatibility but I would dare to say this is rare. Other arrangements such as prenups are also much more likely to happen in such cases where there is financial inequality to begin with or when one of the partners has hereditary assets which they would like to protect. P.S. It's a bit odd that not subsidizing some one these days will count as income inequality, also it's important to point out that financial inequality between partners leads to infidelity and divorce. Partners who make less money than their other partner are much more likely to cheat, especially if they become a full time or part time stay at home parent. Marriages in which one of the partners makes significantly more than the other also are 3 times more likely to end up in divorce.

dikdik 11y ago
Exactly my thoughts. Assortative mating has been happening all along, equality between the sexes is the only thing that has changed here. Back then even if you didn't get married young, most men did not have options to marry a female doctor, banker, lawyer, etc. You would meet a nice secretary at work and probably use similar criteria to today (pretty, compatible personality wise, smart). In 2015 that smart secretary is a smart doctor, none of this is surprising.

jackcosgrove 11y ago

If you marry someone who is dissimilar to you in curiosity, interests, aspirations, and experiences (i.e. not someone in a similar place in society to you), then what the heck are you supposed to talk about for forty to sixty years?

fulafel 11y ago
That sounds like enough time to get bored of talking shop with the same person outside of work.

crdoconnor 11y ago

This is another in a long series of misdirections about income inequality by Tyler Cowen. More details: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/11/desperate-effort-by-tyler-cowen-and-megan-mcardle-to-silence-discussion-about-income-inequality.html http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/11/desperate-effort-by-t... >Of all the causes behind growing income inequality, in the longer run this development may prove one of the most significant and also one of the hardest to counter. Well, that's pretty much why you chose to invent this little story, isn't it Tyler? In unrelated news, robots are totally going to steal your job, which may prove one of the most significant and also one of the hardest causes of income inequality to counter: https://www.aei.org/publication/will-robots-terminate-the-us-middle-class-a-qa-with-tyler-cowen-author-of-average-is-over/ https://www.aei.org/publication/will-robots-terminate-the-us...

Futurebot 11y ago
You might be right about an attempt at misdirection (I wouldn't speculate one way or another, but obviously EPI agrees with you), but I don't think that invalidates the case about income inequality being partially (among many other sources) caused by AM. It seems fairly well-supported by the evidence from NBER, which Cowen wasn't involved in: http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21595972-how-sexual-equality-increases-gap-between-rich-and-poor-households-sex-brains-and http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21595972-how-sex... The (also liberal) Brookings institution also seems to support it, so I don't think the opposition case is exactly ironclad: http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/social-mobility-memos/posts/2014/02/10-opposites-dont-attract-assortative-mating-reeves http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/social-mobility-memos/posts/2... Another thing to consider is that income inequality is increasing via second-order AM effects, via propagation across generations, rather than directly due to the marriages (http://www.economist.com/node/21640316 http://www.economist.com/node/21640316)

rayiner 11y ago

> These days, an investment banker may marry another investment banker rather than a high school sweetheart, or a lawyer will marry another lawyer, or a prestigious client, rather than a secretary. I'm all for reducing income inequality, but I find the complaints about assortive marriage to be, frankly, sexist. Sandra Day O'Connor graduated third in her class at Stanford Law, and was only offered jobs as a legal secretary in private law firms. Back then, a lot of smart, ambitious women were relegated to jobs that didn't maximize their intellectual potential because of sexism in the workplace. Now that sexism is subsiding, and women are free to pursue traditionally male jobs, of course you're seeing more couples marrying within their educational and economic class.

rdlecler1 11y ago
True, one might also argue that our education system greatly suffered as it lost many of the best and brightest teachers (This comment is intended as an observation, not a value judgement).
omonra 11y ago
The complaints are not sexist. People rather tend to focus on one thing at a time. 50 years ago sexism was a real issue - today it's not. Meanwhile growing income inequality (or rather too many poor people - which is the non-pc way to describe it) is becoming a big issue of today.

rdlecler1 11y ago

In Evolutionary theory, Population Generics typically assumes random mating. But because of both assortative mating AND a secular trend toward geographical re-distribution across political, social, and economic factors (bankers in NY, techies in SF, etc) you have the potential makings of speciation: Homo Fund Manager, Homo Engineer? And which proto-species who would the first Mars colonists likely come from? Will a long family of engineers shun a potential husband because he stems from a long family of bankers?